Man I am so grateful for this project, I was afraid it would feel polished enough after having been with Plex for the last few years. But hot damn Jellyfin is so much better and keeps on giving!
I plan on switching regardless but let’s say I was on the fence… Aside from it not being owned by a for-profit company, why is Jellyfin better than Plex?
Plex is focused on making money, whether that is from the sale of your data or selling you products. Jellyfin is a community-driven project, so its focus is just on being better because it exists.
With Jellyfin, it’s truly self-hosting as opposed to leveraging a third party to do some of the legwork. Plex “offers” more, but it all comes at the cost of your data, or your data+an actual fee.
Jellyfin is available directly on most newer TV stores, iOS/Apple TV, Android, Chromecast, Fire stick, and Roku. It already takes some work to set up your media library in the relevant structures, so if you’re going to do the work anyway for a self-hosting option, why pay Plex extra for what Jellyfin can do for free since it is an open-source project?
There’s STILL not a great option for AppleTV. I bit the bullet years ago and have a lifetime infuse option. But that’s not really any different than how I paid (also years ago) for a lifetime Plex Pass too.
There’s a few reasons, but number one for me is how incredibly clean the UI is.
Plex is a mess. Half of it is just premium shit they’re trying to convince you to use. The actual “stream my own media” functionality is buried at the bottom of the menus.
Trying to get nontechnical family to use Plex was always a challenge, just because of how busy it is. I’ve never had this problem since moving to Jellyfin.
People mentioned a lot of things. I’ll add that plex doesn’t offer hardware transcoding without premium. Now, setting up hardware transcoding on an NVidia graphics card on linux is a bit complicated, setting it up on windows is really simple. While it’s not just clicking “enable hardware acceleration”, it’s not much more complicated than that.
Jellyfin is 90% plex, and it’s impressive how it comes forward in leaps and bounds, but it’s not better than plex. People just appreciate it more.
If you only need that 90% that it does (and don’t need things like intro detection, conversions, mobile sync, ass/sas subtitles), then you’ll come away super happy with not having to pay plex and not being locked into plex.
It doesn’t really do much over that 90%, it’s just neat that the 90% isn’t plex
Now that’s the realistic answer I was looking for, thanks! Open source is really the only reason I want to switch. I bought the lifetime Plex pass like a decade ago so the cost doesn’t bother me. The lack of mobile sync is a bummer though
You can run both, since you have Plex paid for anyway. Then you get the best of both worlds, and can maybe get new users on the jellyfin. If they catch that last 10% difference or Plex goes to shit, and jellyfin is a platform you like since you’ll have low-stakes experience with it, maybe you’ll eventually want to move everyone over.
Plus if one service goes down the other may still be up which is nice.
I have remote access for Jellyfin using a domain I purchased just for self-hosting. Using Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) and a dynamic IP service. NPM handles directing the incoming traffic to the correct server. I point a subdomain back to my Jellyfin server. When traveling, I install the Jellyfin app on a smart TV where I am staying, or connect my laptop to the TV and just use the web interface and my subdomain. I also use the Jellyfin android app to connect remotely using a phone or tablet.
At home all my TVs use a Roku and the Jellyfin Roku app to connect locally.
Besides all the other stuff people mentioned, a concrete one is that you can stream TV via it for free vs Plex. Just add a TV tuner to it and away you go.
That’s always been pretty much a niche though (and I know as a former HDHomerun and Kodi user) and over time more people just stream their media anyway.
Man I am so grateful for this project, I was afraid it would feel polished enough after having been with Plex for the last few years. But hot damn Jellyfin is so much better and keeps on giving!
I plan on switching regardless but let’s say I was on the fence… Aside from it not being owned by a for-profit company, why is Jellyfin better than Plex?
That “aside” is everything though.
Plex is focused on making money, whether that is from the sale of your data or selling you products. Jellyfin is a community-driven project, so its focus is just on being better because it exists.
With Jellyfin, it’s truly self-hosting as opposed to leveraging a third party to do some of the legwork. Plex “offers” more, but it all comes at the cost of your data, or your data+an actual fee.
Jellyfin is available directly on most newer TV stores, iOS/Apple TV, Android, Chromecast, Fire stick, and Roku. It already takes some work to set up your media library in the relevant structures, so if you’re going to do the work anyway for a self-hosting option, why pay Plex extra for what Jellyfin can do for free since it is an open-source project?
Pretty much the only problem is the lack of clients for Jellyfin vs Plex.
Which clients do you see missing, though?
I think this might have been the case when Jellyfin originally forked from Emby, but not so much today.
There’s STILL not a great option for AppleTV. I bit the bullet years ago and have a lifetime infuse option. But that’s not really any different than how I paid (also years ago) for a lifetime Plex Pass too.
There’s a few reasons, but number one for me is how incredibly clean the UI is.
Plex is a mess. Half of it is just premium shit they’re trying to convince you to use. The actual “stream my own media” functionality is buried at the bottom of the menus.
Trying to get nontechnical family to use Plex was always a challenge, just because of how busy it is. I’ve never had this problem since moving to Jellyfin.
People mentioned a lot of things. I’ll add that plex doesn’t offer hardware transcoding without premium. Now, setting up hardware transcoding on an NVidia graphics card on linux is a bit complicated, setting it up on windows is really simple. While it’s not just clicking “enable hardware acceleration”, it’s not much more complicated than that.
No link with their bs account system, their bs subscriptions and SyncPlay, SyncPlay is just awesome, I don’t know if plex has something similar
Jellyfin is 90% plex, and it’s impressive how it comes forward in leaps and bounds, but it’s not better than plex. People just appreciate it more.
If you only need that 90% that it does (and don’t need things like intro detection, conversions, mobile sync, ass/sas subtitles), then you’ll come away super happy with not having to pay plex and not being locked into plex.
It doesn’t really do much over that 90%, it’s just neat that the 90% isn’t plex
There’s an intro detection plugin for Jellyfin.
And incidentally, this is likely coming to Jellyfin 10.9 through endrl’s mediasegments PR
Now that’s the realistic answer I was looking for, thanks! Open source is really the only reason I want to switch. I bought the lifetime Plex pass like a decade ago so the cost doesn’t bother me. The lack of mobile sync is a bummer though
You can run both, since you have Plex paid for anyway. Then you get the best of both worlds, and can maybe get new users on the jellyfin. If they catch that last 10% difference or Plex goes to shit, and jellyfin is a platform you like since you’ll have low-stakes experience with it, maybe you’ll eventually want to move everyone over.
Plus if one service goes down the other may still be up which is nice.
I could ddg this, but how does the remote access work? Do I need to open ports out of my home to have users watch stuff?
I have remote access for Jellyfin using a domain I purchased just for self-hosting. Using Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) and a dynamic IP service. NPM handles directing the incoming traffic to the correct server. I point a subdomain back to my Jellyfin server. When traveling, I install the Jellyfin app on a smart TV where I am staying, or connect my laptop to the TV and just use the web interface and my subdomain. I also use the Jellyfin android app to connect remotely using a phone or tablet.
At home all my TVs use a Roku and the Jellyfin Roku app to connect locally.
Besides all the other stuff people mentioned, a concrete one is that you can stream TV via it for free vs Plex. Just add a TV tuner to it and away you go.
That’s always been pretty much a niche though (and I know as a former HDHomerun and Kodi user) and over time more people just stream their media anyway.
No internet needed, no sneaky ads
You can’t login to plex without internet. Why would I tell a company that I login to my server?
Jelly fin let’s you play on mobile without paying. Plex doesn’t
*Let’s you transcode for free completely for all platforms.